A few weeks ago I tried to be hypnotised through a YouTube video. I was very sceptical, but to my amazement, it appeared it actually worked, a bit anyway. With that experience in mind, I decided today to try and see if I could hypnotise myself, a practice many use to help them sleep or relax. I am a fan of meditation, often using it in times of stress, or as an aide to drift off to sleep, and I figured there could be a little cross-over, so I was curious to find out.
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A quick Google search will show hit after hit of how self-hypnosis can change your life. It can apparently help people: stop smoking, lose weight, sleep better, gain self-confidence, calm anxiety and many more. I’m going to cut to the chase, I don’t believe any of this, and even though I gamely tried a few different methods, trying to be open to the experience, it did nothing at all for me.
I first used this video, which offered a technique of noting. With eyes fixed on a point, you first call three things you can see, hear, and touch to yourself in a hypnotic voice, then reduce it to two, then one, until you supposedly find yourself in a trance. The guy introducing this technique does not have a calming or hypnotic voice, and I found him extremely distracting. To give it the full benefit of the doubt I tried the technique later on, without the video and still didn’t feel anything.
I found several videos that equate self-hypnosis with self-belief, suggesting self-hypnosis to be a ‘fake it till you make it’ kind of deal. I like that it’s very well-meaning, but wish they would call it what it is rather than title it hypnosis, evoking some ‘otherness’ about it.
I know I tend to run on the sceptical side of things, but this year has taught me to open to anything and everything. With that being said, I found self-hypnosis, or the versions I found, to be a load of rubbish, and definitely not for me. Not one I’ll be repeating!
New Day, New Thing 